DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Benjamin Christensen
Starring Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppidan, Elith Pio
Release date Out now

Everything you wanted to know about witchcraft but were afraid to ask…

This controversial 1922 Swedish/Danish co-production is part sober-minded documentary about the history of witchcraft and part unnerving horror movie filled with Devils and old crones.

The film is split into five segments, beginning with a series of pictures, models and notes that depict Medieval concepts of witchcraft and Hell. Just when it seems as if we’re in for a slightly dry academic lecture, the film moves on to a succession of elaborate dramatisations. And so, using still-impressive lighting and make-up effects, we see witches offering clients love potions, possessed nuns running amok, Satan visiting sex-hungry women in their bedrooms and witches flying over the city on broomsticks.

The movie then shifts to a more melodramatic account of women being ‘tried’ for witchcraft in the Middle Ages (with confessions extracted through torture), before rounding off with a contemporary segment that suggests women taken for witches may have been mentally ill.

It’s a unique combination of social commentary, historical discussion and sensationalist drama that still proves disturbing 85 years on. With its depictions of torture, sex and sacrilege, it is little wonder that the film was banned Europe-wide on its initial release.

The DVD includes both the restored original version of the film (with a choice of soundtracks) and the shorter, but more fun, 1968 Beat edition featuring a jazz score by Jean-Luc Ponty and narration from William Burroughs. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 7/10
Sex, Satan and torture in a fascinating silent oddity.